Special adviser
- 7 Jan 08, 02:36 PM
Well well.
Downing Street has just announced a major new appointment - the first I sense of more to come. The former chief executive of the regulator OFCOM Stephen Carter (who's currently chief executive of Brunswick Group) has been appointed to the new post of chief of strategy and principal advisor to the prime minister.
Carter will be a special adviser - in other words he's a party appointment not a civil service one - but he will not have the powers to order around civil servants that were granted to Tony Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell or his spin doctor, Alastair Campbell. Carter has, however, got a pretty big sounding title, was appointed by Gordon Brown personally and will report directly to him so civil servants may wish to listen to what he has to say.
Team Brown says that Carter's job will be to hone the political strategy and sharpen the message. There is, I'm told, another vital job that needs doing. Gordon Brown needs someone to take decisions when he's not available and who can say to his face "No prime minister, don't do that".
Will Carter be the man for that job or will others have to follow?
Update 19:00 - Stephen Carter has been hired, I'm told by one well placed adviser, to be Gordon Brown's 'back of the car man' - i.e. someone who can grab a few minutes with the boss on the way to an event and take him through a list of 10 pressing political decisions. In addition, the hope is that Brown and his aides will trust Carter to take those decisions when the PM is simply too busy to take them himself.
Carter has no political background, he was not a member of the Labour Party when he got this job (although he had been in the past) and he only met the prime minister in the last few weeks. He's been hired for his experience of developing a strategy and a message when an ad-man at JWT, and running large organisations in the public and private sectors; the cable firm NTL, the regulator OFCOM and Brunswick.
The talk is that the boss of Brunswick, Alan Parker, brought the two men together. Parker once employed Sarah Brown at Brunswick and she used the company's HQ to house an office for her charitable concerns. It's amusing to note that Carter told The Times that he'd gone to Brunswick, and turned down a move to become chief exec of ITV, because, "he would not be exposed to the same public scrutiny as he has been in previous jobs"! What changed Stephen?
